Posted
by
samzenpuson Thursday February 04, 2010 @11:23AM
from the out-to-sea dept.

siloko writes "A German walker, stranded on sea ice after abandoning the beach in favor of a better picture of the sunset, has been saved after flashes from his camera were spotted by a tourist webcam viewer hundreds of miles away. After darkness fell over the seaside town of St Peter-Ording, the walker became disoriented and couldn't locate the coast. In desperation, the walker, who hasn't been named, started using his camera flash to attract attention, which was noticed by a woman watching a webcam of the area. She notified the police, who located the man and escorted him to safety."

I'm gonna call BS on this. This lady was watching a webcam of a coastal area at nighttime? Why would you do that? And saw a flash 100+ miles away, and based on this decides to call the police? The local police then scour the ice and find this guy who is 100+ miles away? There is either a piece of information missing here, or this is not a completely honest story. Or I'm just horribly cynical.

I think it depends on why she called the police. She might have been a UFO nut or something that wa really freaked out by the light which is why she called. I don't think she realized who or what it was. The police she called however, may have been aware of the missing person, put the facts together, and took a chance on it.

Also the lady understood that a flash "far away" was something unusual for that webcam. This means that our lady was an "addict" of that video feed and was able to understand in a blink what is usual and what is not usual.

I believe you're missing something. She was hundreds of miles away watching a stream from a webcam which was relatively close to the stranded tourist. As for why there's a webcam of the area, I'd guess it's for seal watching or something similar. Nothing all that bizarre or strange.

The article said it was a popular place to get pictures of the sunset. Likely it's the same reason the webcam was up especially since she was watching the sunset as well.

Since it's popular, according to the police there are several incidents of tourists going out onto the ice to get those sunset pictures and getting disoriented and missing the shore, especially as it was covered in snow.